Foretold by the Prophets

Long before, the prophets had foretold his passion as well as his coming in the flesh. The time of his taking flesh had also been foretold, and the way in which the fruits of wickedness and immorality, so ruinous to the works and ways of righteousness, would be destroyed. They foretold that the whole world would share in the virtues of wisdom and sound judgment, because the principles of conduct the Savior would proclaim would prevail over the minds of men almost everywhere. By this the worship of God would be made firm, and the rites of superstition utterly done away with. Those rites had devised not only the slaughter of animals but the sacrifice of human victims and the pollutions of an accursed worship. By the laws of Assyria and Egypt, for example, the lives of innocent men were offered up in images of bronze or clay. That is why these nations have received a recompense worthy of so foul a worship. It was declared that Memphis and Babylon would be laid waste and left desolate, together with their fathers’ gods. Now I say these things not from the report of others. I was there myself and saw with my own eyes the most wretched of these cities, unhappy Memphis. At God’s command Moses laid waste the land of the once mighty Pharaoh, whose arrogance was his ruin. He destroyed Pharaoh’s army, an army that had conquered many mighty nations and was strong in defenses and in arms, not with flights of arrows or the hurling of enemy weapons, but by holy prayer alone and quiet supplication. [a]